Alder Lake: overclocking the 12900K’s iGPU boosts gaming performance by + 50%

Unlike AMD, which favors the integration of graphics solutions on its APUs alone, Intel supports the majority of its processors
an integrated graphics circuit, however less powerful, the iGPU.

In the case of Alder Lake, the American thus went from the UHD Graphics 750 used in Rocket Lake to the UHD Graphics 770. The number of execution units is identical (32), but the dynamic frequency can climb to 1.55 GHz on the Core i9-12900K, when it was stuck at 1.3 GHz on the Core i9-11900K.

The maneuver in detail

The so-called frequency of boost varies depending on processor. Thus, the iGPU of the Core i5-12600K must be content with 1.45 GHz, while that of the Core i7-12700K climbs to 1.5 GHz and that of the Core i9-12900K thus reaches 1.55 GHz. A value that SkatterBencher still finds insufficient, and he decided to boost things.

In his video, SkatterBencher details his approach very precisely. He explains in particular that theoverclocking of the iGPU was made possible by the use of the Multi-Core Enhanced of the Asus motherboard he had available, an ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme. He thus passed the BCLK to 116 to obtain a maximum of 2378 MHz.

Compared to the maximum frequency predicted by Intel, this represents a 53% increase which SkatterBencher has kept stable thanks to a cooling system based on watercooling. The question was to know the impact of such overclocking.

Up to + 61% performance

SkatterBencher presents two types of results here. On the former, he focused on “application” measurement tools. On Handbrake, it is only a question of gaining about 15%, but the other benchmarks are fortunately more convincing.

Thus, the gains are + 44% on Unigine Superposition in 720p with details on low. He gets + 41% on the Night Raid stage of 3dmark and even + 53% on the tool Furmark, the best gain observed.

SkatterBencher then wanted to see the impact on games when the iGPU is initially a bit weak. The gains observed are at the same level with + 41% on Final Fantasy XV and + 49% on Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, still in 1080p. Spaceship even signs a + 61% on an identical definition: not enough to make a weapon of war, but the gain is real.

Source: Youtube